


Long-distance trains

by forgranrairessake



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Pacifist Best Ending (Detroit: Become Human), Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:40:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27683665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forgranrairessake/pseuds/forgranrairessake
Summary: He hopes the long-distance train has a destination, but for some reason the driver doesn't announce a stop.Perhaps there is simply no driver on his train.
Relationships: Hank Anderson & Connor
Kudos: 1





	Long-distance trains

**Author's Note:**

> It is inspired by jezabels - brink, especially the two words that appeared in my mind while listening, and I could stand no more.
> 
> No beta, I'll be happy if you point out mistakes as I'm not native speaker!

Industrial landscape passes behind the window and chimneys of factories are blurred with snow like textures in old videogame. Connor clings to a point on the horizon and doesn't look away until it fades, covered by the iron wall of the carriage. A thought rushes through Connor's head.

He may stay, if he wants to. Or he can leave.

There appeared so many choices, not prescribed by the goal, program or algorithm - unsettling choices, where you can do anything - he is getting along with the absolute anarchy inside and freezes on a snow-covered bench near an eatery that is closed for years, he slides over broken window frames, reproduces the past, spins the yellow wheel.

He may stay, but he has no reasons to stay, and it beats him with a draft and a heavy door of police department, every day - twice - during a year, but he still stays. He has a personal computer, and he would laugh if he could: personal computer much like as a personal dog, Sumo at minimum wages, requires comparatively the same care (compared to life, where he never learned to think in numbers).

The android's life feels like a long-distance train, but there are no more trains running through Detroit.

Connor steps in the department, Connor hangs up his wet coat on a hook (Connor promises to behave like a human and North looks at him with regret - not contempt - she left it for cowards who fled to Canada and her own fears, which she never admits to), Connor sits down at the table and looks on the sticker on the notice board. The dog from the sticker looks back at him.

The rails stretch into an endless perspective, and he closes his eyes, idly calculating the kilometers at which parallel lines converge and diverge again. Arrows click under the wheels, changing the direction of the path.

Now Connor can change the direction of the path from the clear enthusiasm, nude interest, harm - or not change at all. Captain Fowler summons him with a report, and he regrets that Captain Fowler cannot receive the report through invisible nerve wires straight into his human brain. 

Perhaps, electricity kills. He tries not to think about it.

Androids can be killed in many ways, he understood it before the revolution. In the second of running through the cornfield out onto the roof, and Hank fell, and the options spun in a frantic rhythm; androids can be killed in many ways, but much more often they cope with it themselves.

The walls of the carriage are painted with yellow, the color of hospital rooms, stagnant water, protracted parting. Snowflakes gather on the narrow ledge of the window, Connor knows they are cold, Connor knows - to believe in luck is mistake of humanity, but he sees somehow the luck stretching through the code of his thoughts and invented conclusions as a dirty spot.

Modern trains run silently, and while nostalgia for the past is not written for him, there is a lack of alternating wheel clatter, a constant inherent only in this equation - and Connor misses something he has never heard. He also misses the childhood that he didn't have, the father that he didn't have, the words that were never told to him, so he is quiet used to missing.

He misses his future, the one he can calculate in one of the nonexistent branches of events. Connor runs through a cornfield, down dividing of a six-lane track, down the gates of a slum. He hopes that the long-distance train has a destination, but for some reason the driver does not announce a stop.

  
Perhaps there is simply no driver on his train.

Marcus looks at him from the screens on the walls of high buildings and on the inside of his head, imprinted with the brand of revolution, the intoxication of freedom, the thrill of hope, and Connor asks him as if he were God, although, of course, he does not believe in him, what to do when instead of a stomach you have wires, and instead of a heart - a thyrium pump, and what people call feelings works for you like a short circuit.

It happens with him once, and then it happens often, and he he prefers banging against the department door rather than spinning the red wheel every day.

Evening falls on the city, despair falls on Hank and Connor is counting days: three hundred and sixty-sixth from the moment he doesn't care. There are no wars that are not lost, and mankind has nobly shouldered this burden; not that he was complaining, he just didn't have time to choose a side, everything went too spontaneously and too out of control, and he thought that Hank would be happy, but Hank was not at the station, he was not at home, he was not in dozens of fast foods, which Connor disapproved so responsibly.

He feels the fantom hugs on his plastic body. He knows, he imagined them himself.

Marcus looks at him, and Connor thinks, he knows how to hate, because he hate his dirty, useless brown, hates the reflection in the opposite pupils, hates white under the artificial skin, but Marcus looks so knowingly that the train slows down and the passengers get out into the vestibule. North seems to approve of the hate, but her white hand falls into opposite hand like a completed puzzle and Connor feels himself unnecessary detail.

If he could make a choice again, he would've asked Hank, what he feels how he feels when thousands of plastic feet run across his lawn towards independence, not knowing that independence has no destination. He would ask Hank how to get out of the unchanging past and the shaking foggy future into today and start living. He would ask Hank why he doesn't love him. 

But he can't make a choice, and his train enters the tunnel, leaving Detroit.


End file.
